1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus provided with a display section to display various operation screens, an image forming system including the image forming apparatus, and a display method of the operation screens.
2. Description of Related Art
A copier and a multifunction peripheral (hereinafter, these apparatus are generically named as image forming apparatus), both including a copying function, a facsimile function, a printer function, a scanner function, and the like, have become widely used. The image forming apparatus comprises a network connecting section for connecting the image forming apparatus with a communication network, an image processing section for generating printable image data based on the data input through the network connecting section, an image memory control section for performing the control of storing the generated image data and the image data read with a scanner into an image memory, and the control of reading image data from the image memory to output the read image data to a printer, an operation display section for displaying an operation screen for performing setting operations of various functions of the scanner, the printer, and the like, a control section for controlling the whole apparatus, and the like. These components are mutually connected through a system bus.
Because a user can set many items in the image forming apparatus equipped with the above various functions, the image forming apparatus is adapted to display various screens in the operation display section thereof in order to makes it easy for the user to confirm various setting operations and set states, and various proposals have been performed with regard to the display control of the operation screens (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 11-202840).
The operation display section of the image forming apparatus now tends to be enlarging the screen size thereof owing to the increase of the items to be set in association with the enrichment of the functions and the performance of the image forming apparatus, price-reduction of parts such as an LCD, and the like. Moreover, because images, animations, and the like, are also displayed in the operation display section in order to improve the operationality of the image forming apparatus, the control of the operation display section has become complicated. The load to be burdened on the screen control of the CPU to control the operation of the image forming apparatus has been increasing.
A method of dispersing processing by providing a control section (for example, an LCD controller) for controlling the operation display section apart from the CPU of the main body of the image forming apparatus has been used accordingly, but the size of screen data for displaying an operation screen has also become larger in accordance with the enlargement of the operation display section and the complication of the content of display. Consequently, the lowering of the data transfer performance of the system bus of the image forming apparatus and the like have occurred owing to the contention between the image data for printing and the screen data for operation screen formation, and the lowering and the like have exerted the influences on the operations of the image forming apparatus and the screen display switching speed thereof.